


The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

by eriah211



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Halloween, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Hurt Oswald Cobblepot, Long-Suffering Jim Gordon, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Murder Mystery, Oswald Cobblepot & Jim Gordon Friendship, Oswald is good with kids, Protective Jim Gordon, Season/Series 01, never leave your unit behind, season 1 dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:35:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22455826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eriah211/pseuds/eriah211
Summary: It was Halloween and Jim just wanted to go home, but there was just one simple case that needed his attention, in an old, empty house that just happened to belong to Oswald Cobblepot. It couldn't be that bad, right?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Halloween fic, written around Halloween time. Unfortunately, it totally got sidetracked and I couldn't get it finished until now.  
> I wanted to write a Gobblepot story, but I somehow failed and it's just a gen fic, with Jim being just a bit more friendly (less an asshole, we could say) than usual. It could be read as a very light pre-slash, if you squint very hard.  
> This has been betaed by the wonderful goldarrow, all remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Detective James Gordon hated Halloween, but to be fair, all cops in Gotham City did. The usual level of craziness on the streets seemed to increase spectacularly on Halloween night and that was the reason why avoiding the night shift on that particular day was one of the most wanted prizes in the Police Department.

Jim wasn’t sure how Harvey had managed to do it, but that year they were some of the few lucky ones that were going to go home early. Harvey had been bragging about it the whole day, counting the hours until their shift would be over.

Although it had been a very busy day, nothing particularly complicated had come up and after a few hours on the streets, they had come back to the station to work from there. They had spent the last hour of their shift doing some paperwork at their desks, or more accurately, Jim had been doing their paperwork while Harvey read the newspaper and counted down the minutes. Twenty minutes, fifteen, ten, five.

Then the phone on Jim’s desk rang.

“Don’t do it, Jim,” Harvey warned him, pointing a menacing finger at him. “Be smart for once in your life, partner. Let it ring.”

“Our shift isn’t over yet,” Jim replied, shrugging his shoulders.

“There are less than five minutes left, that’s almost the same as over! Let somebody else take that call!” 

When Jim picked up the phone, Harvey threw up his hands with a groan of exasperation and started complaining loudly about his idiotic partner.

Jim ignored Harvey’s rant as he listened to the officer on the phone. It was a new case, as Harvey had feared, but it didn’t look like anything difficult, just some breaking and entering, with the thief hurting himself while he rummaged around. They simply had to meet the owner of the house and make them check if there were any missing items inside. 

Jim told Harvey as much, but he looked clearly unimpressed. Jim turned around to take a notebook and wrote down the address of the house the officer gave him. It was actually not very far away so it wasn’t going to take them too long to get there, and they could simply do a quick interview with the owner and leave the rest to the officers on the scene. 

When Jim turned around to tell Harvey that, though, he saw that the older man had already his jacket and hat on and that he was starting to walk away.

“Harvey!” Jim called after him. “Where are you going?”

“My shift just ended a minute ago, I can’t hear you!” Harvey yelled as he swiftly walked toward the door.

Jim stared in disbelief as Harvey left without looking back and then he sighed. Well, to be completely honest, maybe he deserved it. He was going to have to deal with the case on his own, but it would probably take just a few minutes once they contacted the owner and he could leave the paperwork for another day. It was surely going to be the easiest case anyone could get that day.

***

When Jim arrived at the house right after sunset, though, it didn’t took him long to regret not having followed Harvey’s advice.  
After filling him in on the details of the case, the two officers that were waiting outside told Jim that they had already contacted the owner of the house and that he had already arrived, but Jim’s good mood deflated as soon as he saw who was waiting for him by the front door.

“Jim, old friend!” Oswald greeted him, warmly.

The man, who was looking at him with barely contained excitement, was standing there with a black coat over one of his usual old-fashioned suits and right behind him, a very bored-looking Gabe was playing his part as Oswald’s bodyguard.

“Oswald,” Jim replied flatly, as he walked toward him. “Are you the owner of this house?”

“That’s correct, Jim,” he replied, proudly. “I’m a businessman and as such, I own many different properties in the city, including this house. As they say, diversification is the key to success, right?”

Jim took a look at the house and just shrugged. 

“Well, your property certainly looks like it needs some improvements if you want to get some profit from it.”

It was a big mansion, a two-storied building with a gothic façade that had probably been quite impressive back in the day, but if the weathered exterior and the barren garden were any indication, the house had been abandoned for a very long time. Vandals had destroyed the windows long ago and wood boards had been placed to block them and protect the building from burglars and the elements. 

The man that had just been sent to the hospital in an ambulance didn’t seem to have found it very difficult to break into the house, though. All signs indicated that he had simply managed to open the front door and walk inside discreetly, but something had gone wrong and after a while he had crawled outside through the same door, yelling for help before losing consciousness. 

“Have you already checked if there’s any damage inside or if anything is missing?” Jim asked, hoping to be lucky and get an affirmative answer.

“Oh, no, I’ve been waiting for you to get here, detective.”

Jim cursed under his breath. No luck then.

“Also, those nice police officers over there didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get inside the house again,” Oswald added, smirking. 

“They’ve surely heard the rumors, everybody around here knows them. It was actually quite surprising to hear that somebody had gathered to courage to break into the house and precisely on Halloween night.”

“What rumors?” Jim asked before he could stop himself.

“Oh, you don’t know about them, Jim? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you everything about this house, it’s really a very interesting part of the history of Gotham,” Oswald said, delighted.

Jim wanted to kick himself. The plan was to get rid of Oswald as soon as possible, not to encourage him to start an endless story about an old house.

“Actually, Oswald, that will have to wait. Those officers over there will help you to check the house and they’ll take note if you find damage or-“

“Those officers that are going away right now?” Oswald asked, pointing innocently at the men that were getting into their patrol car, ready to go.

“Hey!” Jim yelled angrily as he rushed toward the car. “Where are you going? You’re supposed to stay here until the owner of the house finishes checking it.”

“We got an urgent call, detective Gordon,” the driver said. “There are riots in The Narrows and they need reinforcements right now.”

Jim wanted to protest, but he knew he couldn’t keep them there when they were needed for more urgent matters.

“Oh, you’ll probably need this inside,” the officer added as he handed him a big flashlight. “Sorry, detective and good luck!”

Jim took a deep breath as he watched them drive away and then walked back to the house to face Oswald and Gabe.

“Well, I guess the three of us are going to take a quick tour around the house then,” he said with very little enthusiasm.

“Well, actually, it’s going to be just you and me, Jim,” Oswald corrected him. “Gabe has to leave now. He has to pick up my mother at the church after the mass finishes. I’ll call a cab when we’re done here.”

“She’s at mass this late?”

“It’s All Saints' Eve, silly,” Oswald said, rolling his eyes. “My mother is a very pious woman and always likes to say a prayer on this day for the ones that have already left us.”

Jim remembered meeting Gertrud Kapelput in Oswald’s club not long ago. She seemed like a strange, old-fashioned woman, which explained a lot about Oswald’s behavior and outfit choices, but she also seemed to love her son very much.

“Since it’s a bit late and the church isn’t in a very good neighborhood, I want to make sure she gets back home safely so I’ve promised her that Gabe would go to drive her home.”

“How very nice of you,” Jim said, trying to sound polite and somehow failing. 

Oswald didn’t seem to notice Jim’s lack of sympathy as he turned to give Gabe some last instructions before he went back to their car. Then he turned back to Jim with a bright smile on his face and affectedly gestured toward the front door.

“After you, detective.”

Finally accepting defeat, Jim sighed as he opened the door and stepped into the house.

***

The inside of the house was as dark as expected, so Jim turned on the flashlight as soon as they walked through the door. 

Considering the size of the house, walking around with only that light to help them check the whole place was going to be a nightmare. Maybe they should leave it for the next morning, Jim thought, after all, there was no real hurry and that way he could send somebody else next day to take care of it.

“We can barely see anything like this,” Oswald complained by his side.

Jim felt this was his chance to call the whole thing off and be free to go, but before he could open his mouth, Oswald tugged at his hand to make the flashlight beam fall on the wall on their right.

“That should be it!” Oswald said as it lit a metallic panel attached to the wall. “The real estate agent that sold me this house said there was a fuse box right by the door. A monstrosity of wires that stained the classic, elegant decoration of the house, he said,” Oswald added as he limped toward it. “But very useful to light the house the moment you walk in.”

“Do you think it still works?” Jim asked, dubiously.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Oswald opened the dusty panel to reveal a set of fuses and switches that looked like they had been installed a century ago. Trying to touch as little as possible of the old wiring, Oswald turned on the main switch and they held their breath.  
Nothing happened for a moment, and just when Jim was starting to feel hope rise again there was a brief flicker of light and then another and then, finally, the lights of the house turned on. Jim cursed internally his bad luck once again.

***

Now that he could take a better look at it, Jim had to admit that the house was quite impressive, even in its state of abandonment.

The narrow entrance where they had found the panel led to a big hall with a wide wooden staircase and right above, at the center of its high ceiling, there was the source of the main lighting in the room, a big chandelier that didn’t have quite as many bulbs now as it had been originally designed to hold, but was, still, spectacular. 

Old-fashioned wallpaper that was mostly intact covered the walls of the hall, and around the staircase the walls were decorated with beautifully carved wood panels that looked quite expensive as well.

There were a few old bronze wall lamps that also helped to light the place and even though many of them weren’t working, the light was enough for Jim to easily follow the traces left by the unfortunate trespasser.

Jim could see one set of footprints on the dusty floorboards, showing the path the man had taken around the hall, but the most noticeable sign of his visit was the dark patch of now dried blood that could be seen staining the first flight of stairs and then spreading over the floor. The trail of blood continued toward the front door, showing the way the man had followed as he had crawled to try to get some help from the outside.

“What do you think happened?” Oswald asked him as he stared at the blood. “Maybe he fell?”

“Not sure yet,” Jim admitted. “Maybe we’ll know when we take a look upstairs.”

Oswald started moving toward the stairs, but Jim grabbed his arm to stop him immediately. Even though the police officers that had arrived first at the scene had surely taken some notes or even some photographs while they waited for him, Jim didn’t want Oswald to step on the blood trail, just in case they had been more careless than usual.

He remembered Oswald had mentioned the men had been reluctant to go inside the house, but surely they had followed the usual procedure when they had found the wounded man outside, or so he hoped.

“We should check this floor first,” he said. “We can go up later.”

“Would you like to hear the story of the house as we go?” Oswald asked him eagerly as they started walking toward the rooms on their right.

“Sure, why not,” Jim agreed, resigned, as he opened one of the doors and turned on the lights inside.

The first room they walked in looked like it had been a big dining room, but the only furniture left now was an old cupboard and a big carpet under a veil of dust. There were no footprints visible there so Jim was fairly sure the trespasser hadn’t been inside that room.

“You probably won’t believe it, Jim, but you’re actually in the house of an old witch,” Oswald started, clearly enjoying the chance to tell the story.

Jim huffed. Perfect, he thought, a scary story they told the children of the neighborhood when they were bored so they would be quiet for a while.

“Well, it’s ridiculous, really, but that’s what everybody said,” Oswald continued. “The true story, though, is almost as good as that. You see, Jim, many years ago, the mother of the Don that ruled the city at the moment used to live here. People said she was crazy, as her mother had been before her, although they were obviously very careful about saying something like that publicly, you know?”

They went into the next room, a kitchen, with a big iron stove still attached to the wall and some old chairs piled up in a corner. There were footprints on the floor, but there wasn’t anything broken or seemingly missing. The stove was certainly a priceless antique, but it was difficult to believe one person could try to steal it on their own. The chairs, on the other hand, looked too damaged to be worth stealing at all. 

“The truth is that back in the old days, rich people dealt with crazy relatives differently,” Oswald explained. “If somebody was, let’s say, not quite there, their very important relatives wouldn’t put them in an asylum, oh, no, that would have been embarrassing! What they usually did was to confine the problematic soul in a very nice house, with a very nice servant that would stop them from causing any trouble. And that was what the Don did in this case.”

They walked to the other side of the hall and took a look at the bathroom. The toilet and the sink still had a reasonably good appearance, but the years hadn’t been that nice to the metallic bathtub, which now showed an ugly combination of shades of grey and green.

They followed the set of footprints to a small room on the left. The thief, if he had, in fact, snuck in with the intention of stealing something, had clearly got into that room, but he had probably been very disappointed at what he had found there. The light of a single hanging light bulb revealed some brooms and other cleaning stuff that looked strangely modern and out of place in that house, but that was all. 

“So, the old woman lived here alone with a lady’s maid for many, many years,” Oswald continued. “She got out of the house very rarely, always accompanied and always wearing a black dress and a black hat, which, to be honest, was probably what started the witch rumors-“

“Oswald,” Jim interrupted him, not caring much about the story. “Did you send people here to clean the house when you bought it?”

“No, I actually didn’t, but the state agent probably sent somebody to make it look more… valuable. It had been closed for many years. If they hadn’t cleaned it a few months ago, we would now be covered in spider webs.”

Jim had to agree with that. Even if the place was dusty and decrepit, there weren’t years' worth of dust and webs covering every corner of the house.

“It was a nice gesture, but I never really came to visit the place before buying it,” Oswald admitted. 

Jim smirked as they walked out of the room and into the hall again, wondering if the rumors about the house had spooked even the mobster.

“It was a bargain, but my mother nearly had a fit when I told her I had bought the house. She has always hated it,” Oswald explained. “She said this place should be demolished, but that would be such a waste. I think that, with some improvements, this house could be sold for a very good sum.”

Jim looked at the set of footprints that went up the stairs. The light on the upper floor looked even dimmer, but it was going to have to be enough. They also had the flashlight, in case they needed it, after all.

“I’ll have to sell it to somebody from outside Gotham, though. Nobody here would want it, nobody had wanted it for decades, even when they kept lowering the price,” Oswald added. “Should we go upstairs now?”

“Nobody wanted it because it had been the house of an old crazy woman?” Jim asked in disbelief as they started walking up the stairs, carefully avoiding the dark stains of blood on the steps.

Jim chuckled. People in Gotham were more superstitious than he had thought. 

“No, Jim, nobody wanted it because it had been the house of a crazy child murderer,” Oswald corrected him, drily.

Jim turned around to look at him in shock.

“Allegedly,” Oswald added with a sly smile. 

The man was obviously pleased at having caught Jim off-guard.

“You didn’t let me finish the story before, Jim,” Oswald said with a mischievous smile.

“Go on then,” Jim replied, as he started walking up the stairs again. “You have my full attention now.”

Oswald looked at him with a glint in his eyes and resumed his story.

“The thing is that some children from the poor side of the city started disappearing around that time. It seems it wasn’t a big concern to the police back then, the Great Depression was a tough time for everybody, so the disappearances were probably simply shrugged off.” 

On the top floor, they saw several overlapping sets of footprints going from one room to another. It looked like the trespasser had been more interested in that floor and had taken a look at every room and every corner.

“There were rumors, of course,” Oswald continued. “Some people said they had seen children near this house, getting in the garden, but in those days there were many stray kids wandering around the city, trying to find something to eat or steal.” 

They walked into the master bedroom and Jim knew for sure that the woman living in that house hadn’t been one of those people who had suffered a tough time in the Great Depression. 

The room was huge, and against the wall on the right there was a big wooden canopy bed with finely carved bedposts. Even if the bed linen and the curtains were missing and it was covered in dust, like the rest of the house, it was evident that it was a very expensive piece of furniture. Against the wall on the other side of the room, there was a large two-door closet, its beautiful woodwork matching the bed, and by its side, right by the blocked window, a big dressing table that was sadly missing its mirror.

“But then one day, a child ran out of this house screaming and alerted the neighbors,” Oswald said as they went to check the next room. “She told the police that an old woman had lured her inside the house offering her some candy and then she had tried to lock her in a room and that time the police couldn’t simply ignore her words.”

“They had a witness,” Jim said as he turned on the light and stepped inside. “They finally got a clue to follow.”

That room was much smaller and the furniture, a single bed by the blocked window and a small closet, looked much, much cheaper.

“Always so naive, detective Gordon,” Oswald said, in a condescending tone. “No, that’s not why they couldn’t ignore the whole thing, like they had done before. Unfortunately for the old lady, the child was the daughter of a rich family, some nouveau riche that had moved to the wealthy neighborhood recently.”

“That couldn’t be the only reason,” Jim objected, weakly.

He wasn’t sure about his own words and they both knew it, but he was too stubborn to admit that the police might have ignored the disappearances just because the children were poor.

“OK, Jim, if you want to believe that, I won’t try to convince you otherwise,” Oswald replied, smiling at him kindly.

They went to the next room, a big sitting room with a wall-to-wall bookcase, a round coffee table and two armchairs that had probably been very comfortable once, but now looked like they would probably collapse if anybody tried to sit down on them.

“So that’s how they caught her?” Jim asked, eventually.

“Oh, no, they didn’t catch her, at all.”

Jim stared at him, confused.

“Well, the wealthy parents didn’t stay quiet and demanded an investigation, that’s true,” Oswald explained. “But I think nobody warned them about the old lady’s family and when they eventually got the news, they simply packed their things and moved to another city in a hurry.”

The last room they checked was much smaller than Jim had expected. It actually looked more like a storage room, or maybe it had been a sewing room, he corrected himself, considering there was an old sewing machine table and a tool in one side and a small open cupboard on the other.

“The Don made sure the investigation was halted quickly and life went on as usual, but the word of what had happened spread around the city and soon everybody knew about the house of the old witch that kidnapped children.” 

“But there really wasn’t any proof of that,” Jim pointed out. “Nobody actually proved she had anything to do with the missing children, it could have been a misunderstanding.”

“But the thing is, Jim, that the old woman died shortly after the scandal… and the child disappearances stopped immediately,” Oswald finished dramatically.

Jim stared at him, waiting for him to add something else, but Oswald simply looked at him proudly.

“That’s it?” Jim asked, unimpressed.

“Well, that’s the story I know,” Oswald replied, noticeably deflating at Jim’s reaction. “The lady’s maid stayed for a while, but soon she was gone too and the house was closed and had been closed until I bought it,” he added, ending the story in a less enthusiastic note.

Oswald seemed truly disappointed that his story hadn’t impressed Jim more. The mobster had really made an effort to make it interesting, Jim had to admit that, it was just that his police mentality didn’t let him overlook the many holes on the story. It was mostly a bunch of rumors wrapped with the usual mean gossiping from the neighbors.

“It was a good Halloween story, Oswald,” Jim said nicely, taking pity on him. “You certainly know how to build suspense.”  
Oswald’s face brightened immediately and he smiled broadly at Jim.

“You surely enjoyed going around with the other kids and telling ghost stories on Halloween when you were little, right?” Jim added.

Oswald’s smile vanished from his face as fast as it had appeared.

“Well, my mother didn’t approve of going around at night begging for candy from the neighbors,” he confessed, looking uncomfortable. “And the other children weren’t very nice so it wasn’t like I wanted to go with them anyway…”

Jim realized he had made a mistake bringing up that topic. It was not difficult to imagine that Oswald had never been one of the popular kids, not even when he was little.

Oswald was looking at him with a slightly embarrassed expression on his face and Jim wondered, not for the first time, how a man that was capable of such horrible crimes could look so innocent sometimes.

“Your mother was probably right,” Jim offered lamely, as he struggled to find something nice to say to him. “Gotham isn’t exactly the best place to let children get candy from strangers…”

“Well, my mother always bought some candy for me, of course, “ Oswald replied, his face lighting up immediately. “And she used to cook a special dinner for us, an old family recipe. She’s an excellent cook, you know?”

“I’m sure she is,” Jim agreed politely.

Oswald smiled at him again, clearly delighted at Jim’s praise. He looked so genuinely happy that Jim couldn’t stop himself from smiling back at him. It was one of those rare moments that almost made Jim forget the man was a mobster.

“Let’s go, Oswald,” Jim said eventually. “We’ve already checked the place, I don’t think the man had broken anything when he got in, except maybe the front door lock, and we’re sure he didn’t take away anything with him so I’ll write a report to state that and you can go to the police station some other day to sign it. If you agree, of course.”

“Yes, I guess there’s nothing else to do here,” Oswald agreed, looking disappointed at the idea of parting ways. “I could go next week to see you and sign the statement,” he added more cheerfully as they made their way down the stairs.

“Well, I’ll leave the papers at the front desk, you can sign them there whenever you like, there is no need for you to wait for me,” Jim clarified.

And there it was, the look of disappointment on Oswald’s face again.

They had reached the hall again. All they had to do was turning off the fuse box and close the front door and Jim would be free to go. He hoped the lock hadn’t been damaged, but even if it had, Jim wasn’t going to wait there to fix that, he would leave it ajar and go away without looking back. 

“That’s great, Jim,” Oswald said, quickly recovering a cheerful tone. “But if I see any mistake in the statement, I’ll have to talk to you, won’t I?

“Yes, of course, Oswald,” Jim agreed, giving up.

It looked like he wasn’t going to get rid of him very easily, as usual.

“Oh, wait!” Oswald said when Jim turned toward the fuse panel. “Can we go up for a moment again? I want to take a picture of the old sewing table. I think maybe my mother would like to have it,” he added excitedly. “If I don’t tell her where I’ve found it, of course.”

Jim groaned and glared at him.

“It’s been a long day, Oswald. Can’t you do that some other time?”

Jim had the feeling that Oswald simply didn’t want to go away yet, but he was really dying to go home and sprawl on the couch so he wasn’t going to fall for his tricks.

“C’mon, Jim, it will take just a minute.” 

The man had the nerve to actually pout at him, Jim thought, bewildered. 

Jim glared at him. Oswald stared back with bright, wide eyes. Jim sighed and caved in. It was probably going to be faster than arguing with him anyway.

“OK, you go up while I take some notes of the scene,” Jim accepted, grudgingly. “But if you haven’t come down by the time I finish, I’ll walk away and leave you here.”

“Of course, Jim, I’ll be quick,” Oswald replied as he quickly turned back to go up the stairs, limping lightly. 

With a sigh of resignation, Jim took out his notebook and started taking some notes about the situation of the footprints all over the house and the blood stains on the hall. 

By the time he had finished, Oswald still hadn’t come back and Jim started to get annoyed, but he wasn’t so heartless as to actually leave the man there without a word so he decided to take a last look inside the rooms on that floor to give Oswald a few more minutes. 

He closed the door of each room with a sound that reverberated on the empty house and after he had finished, he walked back to the foot of the stairs.

“Oswald!” Jim yelled angrily. “What’s taking you so long?”

There was no answer.

Jim frowned. Oswald had to have heard him, what was that man playing at now?

“Oswald, I’m going,” Jim threatened. “If you don’t get down in a minute, you’ll be waiting for a cab on your own!”

Jim was already fed up. He had started going up the stairs angrily, the wooden steps creaking under his feet, when suddenly the lights flickered once, twice, and then they went out completely, leaving him in the dark.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

In the dark, Jim heard some children giggling at the top of the stairs and for a moment he froze. Then his brain started working again and Jim remembered he had a flashlight so he turned it on and lit the stairs. 

He heard another fit of giggling and some light footsteps and then a door being shut with a slam.

Jim cursed under his breath for his stupidity. They had left open the front door while they were checking the house and surely some kids playing pranks on Halloween had sneaked in the house to have some laughs.

That didn’t explain where the hell Oswald was or why he hadn’t answered Jim when he had called, but that man better had a good explanation or Jim was going to get angry. Because Oswald surely couldn’t be in any trouble, Jim thought, feeling uneasy. How could he get himself into trouble in an empty house? Although, to be fair, the man they had found half-dead on the doorstep had managed to find himself in trouble in the exact same situation.

Jim berated himself for the dark thoughts and started moving. Oswald had probably been distracted by something, that was all.

He reached the top floor, using the flashlight to watch his steps and moved the beam of light around trying to find a trace of Oswald or one of the little pranksters. All the room doors were closed, the way they had left them when they had gone down, so he couldn’t be sure where the kids were hiding and he wasn’t really in the mood to play along.

“C’mon kids, enough with the games,” Jim said, trying to sound reasonable. “You have to get out of the house, it’s a private property.”

But he got no answer at all.

Sighing, Jim went first to check the small sewing room in search of Oswald, but when he got there, he found the room was empty. He was about to get out to keep looking for the annoying man when he noticed there was something on the floor by the sewing machine table. It was a phone and it had to be Oswald’s, Jim realized as he took it, the uneasiness growing stronger.

More giggling echoed in the corridor and another door slammed shut, but when Jim hastily exited the sewing room, putting the phone in his pocket, he could find no sign of where the sound had come from. Tired of the teasing and more worried than he would have admitted out loud, he decided to go directly to the sitting room.

Jim considered for a moment if he should go back down to try to turn on the lights, but he rejected the idea. He wasn’t sure the electrical installation would work again and he wasn’t going anywhere until he had found out what was going on.

“Oswald?” he asked tentatively when he opened the door of the sitting room, but again, he got no answer.

There was no reason why the man wouldn’t answer him voluntarily and that could only mean trouble. The idea of some annoying children playing tricks had started to feel unlikely, but what were the alternatives to that explanation? 

That room looked empty, certainly not a trace of Oswald that Jim could see. He used the flashlight to light every corner, but there weren’t really many places to hide, unless… you were very small, Jim thought, noticing something right beside one of the armchairs. It was a tiny shoe, showing behind the chair. 

So he had finally caught one of the kids, Jim thought as he heard a soft, muffled laugh. Judging by the size of the shoe, it certainly looked like that child was way younger than he had expected from a Halloween prankster.

Not wanting the kid to run away in the dark and fall down the stairs, Jim closed the door behind him and then got closer to the armchair slowly.

“It’s OK, kid,” he said calmly. “You aren’t in trouble, but you have to get out of the house before you hurt yourself…”

Jim shone the light behind the armchair only to find an empty space where the little kid should have been. Confused, Jim moved the beam of light around the room, but he didn’t see anything.

Another muffled laugh nearby almost made Jim jump out of his skin. The sound had come from under the coffee table, he realized.

Jim leaned down carefully and lit the floor under the table, but all he saw was dust. Not a single footprint or sign that showed that any child, big or small, had been hiding there.

He knew what he had seen and heard, he was sure of it, Jim thought as his pulse quickened, but the room was empty and the door was closed.

The sound of footsteps outside made Jim run to get out of the room and this time he got out in time to see the door of the main bedroom closing. Jim didn’t hesitate and walked right toward it.

“Hello?” Jim said as he opened the door.

He wasn’t surprised when he got no answer and he wasn’t surprised either when the flashlight let him see that the room was as empty as the others had been. 

With his heart hammering inside his chest, Jim closed the door behind him and walked straight to the big closet and opened it abruptly. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but a big pile of old bed linen wasn’t it. The fabric left little space to hide, but Jim rummaged through it anyway, just to make sure there was nobody hiding behind it.

Then a soft laugh at his back froze him in place.

He turned around aiming the light beam at the big canopy bed and he heard a soft rustling of fabric coming from under it.

Taking a deep breath to steady his hands, Jim crouched down and shone the light under the bed. Again, there was nothing to see there, just a thick layer of dust.

The sound of the closet door slamming shut at his back shocked him and made him fall on his ass unceremoniously, but what almost made Jim’s heart stop was the sight of a little girl sitting on the bed, looking at him with curiosity.

Jim turned the flashlight alternatively from the closet to the girl on the bed, trying to get his heart-rate under control. Every time he turned back the light to the bed, Jim was sure the girl was going to have disappeared again, but she just stayed there, looking at him. When Jim’s unsteady hand finally kept the light on her, she simply smiled broadly at him. 

The little girl looked like she was six years old and she was wearing a blue dress and worn-out black shoes. A blue ribbon was keeping her blonde, curly hair from falling over her face and she looked surprisingly happy to see Jim.

“You’ll never find Peter if he doesn’t want you to, he’s very good at hide and seek,” the girl said in a sweet voice.

A homeless family had probably broken into the house to have a roof over their heads, Jim’s rational mind supplied immediately, doing its best to keep him sane. It was just some squatters with children that happened to be very good at hiding.

Jim realized he had to talk to the girl before she ran away to hide again, but his mouth felt so dry it took him a few tries to get any words out.

“Is Peter in the closet?” he asked, tentatively.

“Maybe,” she replied, frowning lightly. “I can’t tell you that, I shouldn’t help you to find him, that wouldn’t be fair.”

“You’re right, of course,” Jim agreed immediately, trying not to upset the girl. “My name is Jim, by the way. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Anne.”

“Pleased to meet you, Anne,” Jim replied, politely. “So, you’re playing hide and seek?”

The little girl nodded, smiling happily.

“Why aren’t you hiding then?” Jim dared to ask.

“I was bored. Peter is too good at it and Eve always hides in the small room and doesn’t want to get out,” she said, shrugging lightly. “And I don’t get to see new people in the house very often, so I didn’t want to keep hiding.”

“Have you seen other people around recently?” Jim asked.

Anne nodded and Jim started to wonder if Anne had met the man who had sneaked into the house before.

“Are you looking for your friend? The one that walks funny?” the little girl said before Jim had the chance to ask her about the injured man.

Jim was about to reply that Oswald wasn’t his friend, but he managed to stop himself in time. He had got so used to having to distance himself from the friendly attitude of the mobster that the reply had started to get out of him automatically, out of habit, but Jim realized that it was probably not the right thing to say to a little girl who knew nothing about Oswald’s criminal activities.

“Yes, I’m looking for the man that was with me before,” he added, trying to sound friendly. “Have you seen him?”

Anne nodded again, this time with a serious expression on her face.

“Do you know where he is?”

This time Jim got a worried look and a light nod in response and he felt a knot in his stomach tightening.

“Could you show me where he is?” Jim asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice.

Anne looked at him with uncertainty, but she didn’t answer. She looked scared, Jim noticed, and that couldn’t be good a good sign.

“Please?” Jim begged.

Anne hesitated for a moment, but then nodded determinedly.

She got off the bed without moving a speck of dust around and ran toward the closed door. Then she simply went through it without making a sound while Jim was left inside the room, staring in horror at the closed wooden door.

Jim grabbed one of the bedposts to help himself stay upright when for a moment his knees went weak. There was nothing his mind could say about this to keep it rational any longer when he had just seen the ghost of a little girl go through a solid surface right in front of him. 

All that was left was to follow her outside if he wanted to find Oswald, so Jim walked to the door and opened it to face what would come next.

***

When he walked out of the room, Jim saw that the little girl was standing by the door of the sewing room waiting for him.  
“I’ve already looked there, Anne,” Jim said, confused. “My friend isn’t there.”

“You didn’t look very well,” Anne replied with a condescending tone. “You’re very bad at hide and seek, Jim.”

The ghost of a little girl was berating him for his lack of detective skills, Jim thought with a sense of detachment. He should probably feel offended, but things had reached a point where everything was too strange to even be bothered by something like that.

He went inside the room and checked again, but it was as empty as it had been before. 

Anne seemed to take pity on him and pointed at the small cupboard on the wall.

“You just have to push,” she said. 

Jim aimed the flashlight at the cupboard and then he noticed it. On the floor, among the marks of their footprints from their previous visits, there was an arc scratched on the floorboards that started right at the corner of the cupboard.

Jim put his hands on the side of the cupboard and pushed. It moved slightly, but it wasn’t enough. Jim pushed toward the wall, harder, and then, with a soft click, the cupboard swung toward Jim slowly, revealing a narrow staircase that led, supposedly, to the attic.

“What’s up there?” Jim asked Anne.

“Her special room,” she replied with a somber expression.

Jim wasn’t sure what ‘special’ meant, but by the look on the little girl’s face, it wasn’t anything nice. Although he had a feeling he was going to discover it soon, he thought as he stepped into the narrow space behind the cupboard.

“Are you coming up with me?” Jim asked, his foot already on the first of the steps.

“I don’t like it in there,” Anne said with worry. “Maybe you shouldn’t go up there either.” 

Jim’s heart ached. He wished he could promise the little girl that everything was going to be fine, but how could he say that when he knew he was many decades too late to save her.

“Don’t worry, Anne, I’ll be fine,” he said, smiling reassuringly. “I have to go find my friend, but we’ll come back really soon.”

Anne smiled hesitantly at him and then walked out of the sewing room to disappear into the darkness.

***

As he walked up the narrow staircase, Jim was surprised to see there was some kind of light in the room upstairs, but he was even more surprised to hear Oswald’s laugh coming from there.

When he got at the top of the stair, Jim realized that the light was coming from a round skylight in the ceiling that let the moonlight in, and there, in the middle of the room, Oswald Cobblepot was sitting on the floor, laughing lightly as he talked to somebody that Jim couldn’t see. 

“Don’t be mean, Stevie, pour Mary some tea,” Jim heard Oswald say.

As he looked around, Jim realized with a sickening feeling that it was a child’s room. Even though the whole place was covered in tons of dust and spider webs dangled from every piece of furniture, it was difficult to miss the shapes of the dusty toys on the bookcase and the small bed by the wall. 

“Oswald,” Jim called, trying to get the man’s attention.

It seemed very out of character for Oswald to be sitting on the dirty floor, ruining one of his fine suits, but that was not the most worrying aspect of the situation, it was the fact that he hadn’t even turned around to acknowledge him yet.

“Oswald!” Jim tried again, more loudly, as he got closer to him.

That seemed to do the trick and Oswald turned around to look at him with a confused expression on his face. There was a bruise on his temple, but he seemed to be unharmed otherwise.

“Oswald, we have to get out of here now,” Jim said, trying to sound calm.

He grabbed Oswald by the arm and tugged at him, trying to get him to stand up, but Oswald just stared at him with glazed eyes as if he didn’t recognize him.

“Oswald, look at me, c’mon, wake up!” Jim said as he shook the smaller man a bit more forcefully than he had intended. “You can’t stay here!”

The vigorous shaking seemed to work and Oswald blinked several times to finally look at Jim with more focused eyes. 

“Jim?” Oswald said, confused, as he clung to his arms to stand up. “Jim, old friend!”

“Yes, that’s me,” Jim said, feeling very relieved to see the man getting back to his senses.

“Where…? What has happened?” Oswald asked, as he looked around the room, scared.

“You went upstairs to take a photo, remember?” Jim said, still keeping a hand on Oswald’s arm as the other man seemed a bit unsteady on his feet.

“Yes, yes, I do…” he said, looking as if he was trying very hard to remember. “I was about to take the picture when something threw me against the wall and then… then I woke up here and you were so rudely shaking me,” he added, sounding slightly offended.

“You don’t remember anything else?” Jim asked, ignoring Oswald’s complaint. “You were talking to somebody when I got here…”

Oswald frowned, disconcerted, and looked back at the spot on the floor where he had been sitting when Jim had come in. For a moment, it looked like he had remembered something, but then he shook his head and looked back at Jim in confusion. 

“It’s Ok, we can talk about that later, we have to get out now,” Jim said, yanking at Oswald’s arm toward the staircase, but trying to be gentle this time.

They had taken just a few steps when suddenly something tugged at Oswald’s other arm and stopped him in his tracks.

“No, you can’t take him away!”

The yelling came from a little kid that had appeared behind Oswald and was grasping his arm in an iron grip. The young boy didn’t look much older than Anne and he was wearing a shirt and short trousers that looked as worn-out as his old shoes. 

“He’s my friend now, he’s going to stay to play with us! He promised!” the young kid insisted, dragging Oswald back to the middle of the room without Jim being able to do anything to stop him.

The mobster looked wide-eyed at the little child, shocked, but then a spark of recognition glinted in his eyes.

“Stevie, right?” Oswald said, hesitantly.

“Yes,” the boy replied, smiling to his ‘friend’.

“We were having a little party… a tea party,” Oswald continued as he apparently started remembering. “With your friend Mary, isn’t it? Where is she?”

“She’s very shy, she’s just a little kid,” Stevie said proudly, clearly not considering himself a little kid at all. “She ran away when this man walked in,” he added, glaring at Jim.

“Well, I’m sorry I scared her, I didn’t mean to,” Jim replied, trying to sound as amicable as possible.

Jim stared at Oswald, trying to know if the other man truly understood what was really going on in that house. The mobster looked shocked, yes, but there was also a shadow of sadness in his eyes that let Jim know that Oswald was aware of the nature of those children.

“Can we keep playing now?” Stevie asked stubbornly, still clinging to Oswald’s arm.

Looking slightly scared, Oswald gave Jim a pleading look, but Jim had never expected to be in a situation like that and he felt way out of his depth. He knew he had to do something, but he wondered what he could do if the ghost decided he was never going to let go of Oswald.

“It’s a bit late now,” Jim said, deciding to play along. “Oswald can come back some other day to play with you, though. I’ll bring him myself so he doesn’t miss the next tea party.”

“You promise?” the boy asked, not completely convinced.

“I do,” Jim lied, feeling slightly guilty.

The little boy looked uncertain, but after a moment of hesitation he let go of Oswald’s arm.

“Thank you, Stevie,” Oswald said weakly as Jim immediately started dragging him toward the stairs. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.” 

They went down the stairs as fast as they could and without looking back.

“You’ve lied to a little boy, Jim,” Oswald whispered to him as they reached the sewing room.

“I’ve lied to the ghost of a little boy,” Jim corrected him in a hushed tone. “What did you want me to do, huh? Was I supposed to leave you there?”

Without bothering to close the secret staircase with the cupboard again, they walked out of the room and headed toward the stairs.

“You’ve found your friend,” a soft voice startled them.

Turning around, Jim saw Anne standing right behind them. He wished they would stop sneaking up on them like that or he was going to have a heart attack before he could reach the front door.

“Anne,” Jim greeted her calmly, as he put a reassuring hand on Oswald’s shivering shoulder. “Yes, I have, thank you for your help.”

“Are you leaving already?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

“Well, yes, my friend hit his head and he should go home to have some rest,” Jim improvised.

He looked straight in the eye at Oswald, silently willing him to play his part in the charade.

“I-I don’t feel so well,” Oswald said in a very convincing unsteady voice.

Jim guessed the other man didn’t really need to pretend much, considering all that had happened that evening. 

Anne didn’t look happy, but she shrugged lightly, seemingly understanding their reasons and Jim decided it was their cue to go. Oswald leaned on his arm for support and together they started walking down the stairs slowly.

“I’m sorry your friend was hurt, she still gets angry sometimes,” Anne said as they went down. “The man that was here before you arrived woke her up and put her in a very bad mood.”

Jim wondered who she was referring to and what the man had done to make anybody angry. Could it have been Eve? Mary? When Jim looked back to ask Anne about it, though, the little girl was already gone.

Well, Jim thought, it was not really important, the most important thing at the moment was to get out of the house so he kept walking down the stairs with Oswald limping quietly by his side.

Almost there, Jim thought, but then the flashlight lit the last set of stairs and they both froze on the spot. The figure of a little girl in short dark hair and a ragged white dress was crouched on one of the steps.

She looked even younger than the other children and she was sobbing quietly, making a sound that broke Jim’s heart. He looked at Oswald to see if the man was OK, but the mobster wasn’t paying him much attention. Oswald was looking at the little girl with great sadness and this time, it was him who squeezed Jim’s arm reassuringly, fear clearly forgotten at the sight of the crying child.

“Mary?” Oswald called softy as he let go of Jim’s arm and walked down a few steps to get closer to her. “What’s the matter?”

So that was the other girl from the attic, Jim realized. She didn’t look dangerous, but looks could be deceiving, he thought remembering Stevie’s strength.

Mary looked up with teary eyes and sniffled lightly.

“I want to go home,” she keened.

Those words broke Jim’s heart, but again, he didn’t know what to say to comfort her.

“This isn’t your home, right?” Oswald asked her carefully and she immediately shook her head. “How did you... get stuck here?”

“She said if I was good at hide and seek, she would give me some cake. She said I had to hide in the room upstairs and not let anybody find me until dark and then I would win,” she explained. “But I won and she didn’t let me go. She said if I stayed here with her she would give me cake every day, but I wanted to go home and I cried and she got angry.”

The little girl started sobbing again and Oswald slowly crouched down to sit by her side.

“Have you ever tried to get out of the house?” Oswald asked gently. “Maybe you don’t know where to go?”

“She said she would never let us go, that we had to stay with her, but I didn’t like her,” Mary explained between sobs. “Then the old lady died one day and she went away, she didn’t stay with us and then they closed the doors and the windows and nobody else came to live with us anymore.”

“And you couldn’t leave the house when the woman that hurt you went away?” Jim asked.

She looked up at him in confusion. “But… she never left.”

“But you just said-“

The implications of what she had said sank in just the moment two strong hands grabbed him from behind and threw him against the handrail like a ragdoll.

Jim heard the terrified scream of the little girl as he fell to the stairwell, bringing down with him a piece of the handrail. The fall was fortunately short, but his shoulder impacted against the floor sending a bolt of pain through his back and making him drop the flashlight.

“Jim!”

He heard Oswald rushing down the stairs to get to his side and soon felt a shaky hand on his chest.

“Are you OK, Jim?”

Still trying to get his breath back, Jim barely managed to utter an affirmative answer.

Sitting down, Jim reached for the flashlight, which was, thankfully, still working, and aimed it at the stairs. There was nothing there, his attacker nowhere to be seen, even Mary seemed to have run away to hide again. Still, Jim knew there was somebody there, he could feel it.

“What has happened?” Oswald asked him as he helped Jim to stand up.

“Somebody pushed me,” Jim said. “You didn’t see anything?”

He turned the beam of light around, trying to see where the threat would come from next, and then he noticed something on the wall below the stairs.

When he had broken a part of the handrail on his fall, the broken balusters had detached one of the big wooden panels that decorated the walls below and now it was barely hanging on its place. But it hadn’t really been attached to a wall, Jim noticed, because the space under the stairs was hollow.

Jim tried to light the space left open by the panel, but it was difficult to see anything. He was about to grab Oswald and rush out of the house for good when he heard it. It was faint, but it wasn’t difficult to hear it in the complete silence of the house. It was the heartbreaking sound of a child crying, coming from inside the space under the stairs. 

Jim heard Oswald gasp by his side and they both stood there for a moment, rooted to the spot. Then Oswald took a slow step forward and raised a trembling hand to grab the hanging panel. A part of Jim didn’t want to see what was inside. He had a feeling he already knew what they were going to find there, but he didn’t try to stop the other man. 

Just as Oswald had grabbed the panel, the shriek of a woman made Jim’s blood run cold.

“Miiiinee!” the woman hollered from the stairs above them.

The face contorted into a hideous mask of hatred was not the face of an old lady, but the face of a younger woman, the lady’s maid. For a child, though, the woman must have looked old and everybody had just assumed that the ‘old woman’ the girl had described to the police had been, in fact, the lady of the house. She was wearing a tattered long black dress and her hair, loose and disheveled, fell in tangled grey locks over her shoulders.

“Time to go, Oswald!” Jim said as he pushed the other man toward the entrance.

They didn’t get very far, though. They had just taken a few steps when Oswald was violently pushed against him, making them both fall to the floor.

This time Jim didn’t let go of the flashlight, though, and when he turned around, trying to help Oswald to stand up as fast as possible, the light let him see the long, bony fingers of the woman closing around Oswald’s neck.

Jim grabbed his gun on instinct, but he immediately realized it was a futile move. The woman was already dead, for fuck’s sake, what could a bullet do to her?

Looking at him with wide, panicked eyes, Oswald opened his mouth to say something, but before he could do it, he was suddenly dragged away into the darkness.

“No!” Jim yelled as he rushed to stand up.

When he turned the beam of light around, Jim saw that the woman was dragging Oswald up the stairs by the arm relentlessly.  
“Jim!” Oswald cried desperately.

Jim ran after them without hesitation and when he reached them he grabbed Oswald’s arm, determined to not let go. The woman turned around to look at him, surprised, but immediately her lips curled into a cruel sneer. She was keeping an iron grip on Oswald’s other arm and Jim didn’t have the slightest idea about how he could make her let go of him.

The sound of a car approaching and then stopping by the house surprised Jim and hopeful, he wondered if the police officers from before had miraculously returned to check on them.

“Help!” Jim yelled, trying to attract the attention of the people outside the house. “In here!”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt the strong grip of the woman on his throat as she pushed him against the wall and lifted him up easily with just one hand until his feet didn’t touch the floor any longer. Jim let go of Oswald’s arm as he struggled to breathe. The woman was still holding the mobster with her other hand and even though he was trying to get free, the woman seemed unfazed by any of his efforts to release his arm from her tight grasp.

Jim’s efforts were equally useless as he tried to loosen her grip on him. The bony fingers that squeezed his neck felt like stone, impossibly cold and hard, and it seemed like there was nothing he could do to remove them.

Suddenly, light flooded the hall as the front door was brusquely opened and two figures walked into the house. To Jim’s surprise, they weren’t the police officers that had left earlier, but they were people Jim knew nevertheless.

The short figure of a woman with long curly hair walked into the hall first, followed closely by a much bigger man that seemed to be trying to stop her, with little success. They both stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked in surprise at the scene that was taking place there.

“Get away from my son!” Gertrud Kapelput demanded, fiercely.

Behind her, Gabe stared wide-eyed at them. He blinked once, twice, and then he made the sign of the cross, but he seemed too confused or scared to move. Mrs Kapelput, though, immediately rushed up the stairs, fearless. 

“Leave them!” she yelled with furious determination. “Don’t you dare to touch my boy!”

When she reached them, she threw herself against the woman without a moment of hesitation. To Jim’s surprise, the moment Gertrud’s outstretched arms touched her, she let out a furious shriek and disintegrated like a figurine made of dust blown away by the wind.

Jim fell down, his neck finally free, and he took a deep breath to ease his strained lungs. Next to him, Gertrud had already wrapped her arms around her son and was making sure he was fine.

“M-mother…” Oswald was saying in awe. “How did you-“

An enraged howl upstairs stopped the family reunion and Jim thought he had already had enough of that shit for one day.  
“Out, now,” he ordered as he helped Oswald and his mother to get down the stairs.

Gabe, who seemed to finally have shaken himself out of his stupor, was waiting for them with his gun in his hand.

“I don’t think that would work,” Jim told him as they met at the bottom of the stairs. “We have to get out of here now!”

“No shit,” the thug replied flatly.

Another shriek echoed in the house and a loud creaking sound followed it. They all ran toward the front door without a word and just a second later the big chandelier fell on the floor of the hall, breaking into a million little pieces.

Nobody turned around to take a last look behind them as they ran through the front door and into the garden, finally getting out of reach of the evil spirit that still inhabited the house.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, first thing, Jim brought a forensics team and some police officers to the house with him to turn it upside down, if necessary. He omitted some of the events of the night before, just so he wouldn’t sound like a lunatic, and simply claimed that an intruder had damaged the house and attacked them and that they had to check the house for other suspicious activities that might have taken place there. 

As expected, Harvey made fun of him when Jim told him about the mess he had got himself into by taking that last phone call. Even though Jim told him more details of the story, he still couldn’t get himself to be completely honest with the other cop about what he had seen in the house. 

“Everybody knows the old rumors about that house,” Harvey said, laughing at him. “People usually avoid it, but of course you had to go there, on Halloween, and with no other than Oswald Cobblepot!”

“How was I supposed to know that Oswald was the owner?” Jim protested.

“Well, it serves you right for not listening to your partner,” Harvey replied, smugly “But, anyway, here we are, about to go to that house again. By the way, what do you expect us to find there exactly?” he added, looking at him suspiciously.

“Something that needs to be found,” he replied cryptically and then walked to their car, ignoring Harvey’s puzzled look.

When they got to the house, Jim was surprised to find not only Oswald and Gabe there, but also Gertrud Kapelput and an old man. When they got closer, Jim realized the man, who was walking around the barren garden with Oswald’s mother, was a priest. He was wearing the traditional black cassock and a big cross and was apparently blessing the house and its surroundings with a very serious expression on his face while Gertrud prayed fervently by his side.

“My mother insisted,” Oswald said when Jim looked at him questioningly as he reached him. 

Considering what he had seen inside the house the day before, Jim didn’t find it as ridiculous as he would have not so long ago. Nobody else seemed to mind either, Jim realized as he watched the police team walk slowly into the house and if any of them found it weird, well, nobody said a word.

Gertrud noticed Jim talking to Oswald and immediately left the priest’s side to go to greet him warmly. 

“Detective Gordon,” Gertrud said offering her hand to Jim in her old-fashioned way.

This time the gesture didn’t take him by surprise and Jim managed to give her hand a light kiss in a more polite manner, earning him a very pleased smile from Gertrud.

“Oswald told me what happened in that awful house yesterday,” she said, her smile turning into a worried frown. “And I wanted to thank you, detective, for taking care of my Oswald. I know you protected him, kept him safe.”

“Well, I tried, Mrs Kapelput,” Jim replied, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the woman’s praise. “But you were the hero of the day, to be completely honest.”

He glanced at Oswald, who was looking at him with a bright smile on his face, and wondered if the mobster had told his mother the whole story or if he had skipped some parts of it. 

“I always tell my son not to trust the police, but you are not like the others,” she kept talking while still holding Jim’s hand. “My Oswald was right, you are special, I’m so glad that you and my son are friends-“

“Mother,” Oswald interrupted, nervously barging into the conversation. “Maybe we should check on Father Bartha and see if he has already finished or if he needs anything.”

“Of course, of course, my darling,” she replied, lovingly cupping Oswald’s face with her hand. 

It was Oswald’s turn to look slightly embarrassed, Jim noticed, amused. 

He watched mother and son walk away to meet the busy priest and then turned to Harvey, who had been waiting for him a few feet away with a barely concealed expression of amusement on his face.

“It’s always important to have the blessing of the mother-in-law,” Harvey teased him. “She seems to be a bit of a loony, but-“

“Hey! Don’t be rude, Harvey,” Jim stopped him immediately. “She’s a bit… peculiar, but she’s a good person. And she probably saved my life yesterday.”

“Oh, yes, that woman made the dangerous intruder run away, that’s what you said,” Harvey replied with sarcasm. “It sounds highly unlikely. Would you want to elaborate on that story, partner?”

“Well, she did,” Jim said, stubbornly refusing to add anything else.

Jim had learnt that Gertrud had insisted on going to the house, worried sick about her son being there that night and ignoring Gabe’s attempts at convincing her to go home, and Jim couldn’t be more grateful for Gertrud’s overprotective instincts. 

“All right, all right,” Harvey said, raising his hands in defeat. “At least, could you tell me what we’re really looking for? And how long we’re supposed to stay here, freezing our asses off, waiting to find it?”

“I’m not sure how long, Harvey,” Jim replied, blatantly ignoring the first question. “But I’ll wait for as long as it takes.”

In the end it didn’t take the team long to find the bodies, though, since Jim had asked the officers to look in the space under the stairs first.

It looked like it had been a small storage room once, but the door had been disguised with panels so people wouldn’t notice there was a room there unless they knew where to look. And that’s where they found the body of the woman, lying in a corner, and right below her, buried under the loose floorboards, were the bodies of the little children.

The forensics officers were puzzled when they realized the room had been blocked from the inside, which could only mean that the woman had locked herself in before dying.

“It’s still too early to say for sure how the woman died, but we found a bottle of cyanide in one of her pockets,” one of the officers explained. “We’ll know more after the autopsies.”

Unfortunately, Jim thought, he already had a good idea of what had happened. After the old lady’s death, the maid had realized she was going to have to leave the house, and that crazy woman had refused to leave her ‘little treasures’ so she had packed her things, made them disappear, and then locked herself in the room with them, forever.

Everybody had thought she had gone away, nobody had paid a maid much attention, but she had in fact, never really left the house.

“So, the bodies of the missing children, huh? It looks like the old rumors were true after all,” Harvey said, as they took a break outside. “People will want to know how you knew where to look for them, Jim.”

“I think I saw something when the panel fell…” Jim offered lamely.

“The body of the woman was a heap in a corner and the children were buried under the floor, but you saw ‘something’ through a small gap, in the dark, thanks to a flashlight,” Harvey replied flatly. “You’ll have to give a better answer than that when they ask you, partner.”

“I-I, well, maybe-"

“The intruder mentioned it while he was attacking us, actually,” Oswald said with conviction as he limped toward them through the garden. “He had probably discovered it while he was rummaging around the house.”

“So he happened to mention where the old lady had buried the bodies, just in passing?” Harvey said to him with a sneer.

“It wasn’t the lady of the house, it was the maid,” Oswald corrected him drily. “Or so he said.”

“That was a very chatty intruder,” Harvey replied with sarcasm.

Oswald lifted his chin defiantly as they stared stubbornly at each other.

“You’re a terrible liar, Jim,” Harvey eventually said to him. “Penguin’s excuse is better than the one you just made up, maybe you should go with that.” 

Jim looked at him with a sheepish smile, but said nothing.

“Did that guy tell you if we’re going to find anything else in the house, by any chance?” Harvey asked him, mockingly.

“No, I don’t think he did,” Jim said, feeling slightly embarrassed about lying to his partner.

Harvey shook his head in exasperation and then went inside to talk to the officers that were still checking the house.

Once they were alone, Oswald turned to face Jim with a serious expression on his face.

“I’ve already sent my mother home with Father Bartha, there’s no need for her to be here when they take out the bodies of the children,” he explained with sadness. “But before I go, I want you to know that I’m going to make sure those kids get a proper burial. They have waited for so long to rest in peace, Jim,” he added, his eyes bright with tears. “And I’ll take care of all the arrangements necessary and the expenses, the police can’t keep the bodies stored in bags somewhere forever, I don’t care what the-"

“It’s OK, Oswald, they’ll get a proper burial, you don’t have to worry about that,” Jim said reassuringly, stopping his rambling. “I’m going to make sure of it. You have my word.”

“Thank you, Jim,” he said, blinking back some tears. “It’s important to me.”

“To me too, Oswald,” Jim admitted. “They’ll have peace at last.”

“Also, I-I wanted to thank you, Jim,” Oswald added, looking at him seriously again. “For helping me and not leaving me there last night.”

Jim shifted uncomfortably under Oswald’s intense gaze.

“I was never going to leave you behind, Oswald,” he replied, getting a bright smile from Oswald in return. “But, well, in the end, your mother was the one who saved us both. I still wonder how she did it, anyway.”

“My mother thinks it has something to do with the mass she had attended before going to the house,” Oswald said, shrugging. “She said the priest had blessed the attendees as they were leaving and that maybe that was protecting her from ‘evil spirits’.”

“Maybe it was simply the power of motherly love,” Jim mused out loud. “I have no doubt that she loves you very much. She looked ready to tear the house down if she needed to do it to save her son.”

Oswald smiled proudly at Jim’s words.

“She has always loved me dearly,” he agreed with a warm smile. “No matter what.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the forensics team taking a big bag out of the house. The body of the maid, Jim deduced. 

“What will they do with her remains?” Oswald asked, with a frown.

“She’ll be given a proper burial too,” Jim replied. “Don’t you agree?”

“Oh, I do, I think it’s the right thing to do. After all, she won’t be judged in this world, but she’ll have to answer for her crimes in the next.”

“Do you really believe that?” Jim asked him with curiosity.

“That’s what my mother would say,” he replied with a noncommittal shrug. “See you around, Jim Gordon.”

“See you around, Oswald.”

Oswald smiled at him with a glint in his eyes before walking away and Jim realized that somehow he didn’t find it difficult at all to smile back at him.

Jim watched Oswald limp to his car, where Gabe was waiting for him, and thought that he was never going to get rid of the friendly mobster, but to this surprise, he realized that the idea didn’t bother him so much anymore.

Jim was still smiling when he turned around to get back to the old house, ready to face a new day in Gotham City.

END


End file.
